Domestic violence continued to take a tragic toll in 2013

When it comes to the scourge of domestic violence in the North Penn/Indian Valley area — and Montgomery County as a whole — 2013 “has been a hard year,” according to Beth Sturman, the executive director of Laurel House, which provides comprehensive services to victims of domestic violence in Montco.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve ever looked back on any given year and thought, ‘Gee, isn’t this great, things are slowing down, wow, this has been a year where overall people seem safer,’” said Sturman. “But this has been a rough year.”

Indeed, some of the most brutal and heartbreaking crimes in the region in 2013 — including two high-profile homicides — are related in some way to domestic or dating violence.

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In the early morning hours of June 7, 30-year-old Mona Elswedy Mitwalli was fatally stabbed inside her Hatfield Township home while her twin 5-year-old daughters slept upstairs. Her husband, Walid Mitwalli, 36, has been charged with murder in the case and is awaiting trial.

According to investigators, Mitwalli — apparently convinced his wife was cheating on him — had been spying on her with recording devices set up in their home. In the months leading up to the slaying, police said, Mitwalli had served his wife with divorce papers, tried to have her involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, and sought a Protection From Abuse order against his wife, claiming she had threatened him with a knife, although a judge ultimately dismissed the PFA.

Mona Mitwalli even told her mother at one point that her husband was “planning something,” investigators said, a belief that appeared tragically prescient.

Meanwhile, just two weeks earlier, on May 25, 17-year-old Julianne Siller, of Royersford, was stabbed to death in a Skippack Park. Her then 16-year-old boyfriend Tristan Stahley has been charged in her death.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, Stahley told investigators that on the evening of May 25 he and Siller, who had been dating on and off since January, had been arguing about Siller smashing his phone and “going out.”

Stahley said that he and Siller drove to Palmer Park and continued arguing, police allege, and stated that he stabbed Siller in the throat and body with an orange-handled knife, then dragged her body into the woods, near a walking trail, to conceal it.

Stahley, now 17, who has been charged as an adult with Siller’s murder, is awaiting trial.

Other domestic assaults led to near-fatalities this year: Inside their Hatfield Borough home on March 10, Thomas Troy Young, 50, allegedly stabbed his wife multiple times and tried to strangle her with a warm-up suit after he “became enraged with her over a Facebook posting that she had ‘liked’ that someone else had posted,” the victim — who was flown to a Philadelphia hospital with life-threatening injuries — reportedly told police.

Young fled after the alleged attack, but turned himself into authorities five days later. He’s currently awaiting trial on attempted murder and related charges.

The details of dozens more alleged domestic incidents were at times disturbing, haunting or sickening.

In September, the wife of Telford resident Caleb Myers, 24, handed over to police a 29-minute recording on her cellphone of an alleged assault by her husband that purportedly occurred in May.

On the recording, according to documents filed in district court, Myers can “clearly be heard...terrorizing (his wife) by knife, strangulation, threats of killing her and physically restraining and menacing her.”

Police said that during the recording, the couple’s two young children can be heard “begging their ‘daddy’ to stop hurting their ‘mommy,’” and at one point the sound of water filling a bath can be heard while Myers tells his wife that he’s going to drown her.

Myers is scheduled to be formally arraigned on more than a dozen felony and misdemeanor charges — including multiple counts of aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of children — in county court in January.

And earlier in December, Lansdale resident Michael Molina, 23, allegedly ripped the earrings out of his wife’s ears and then tore part of her tongue while she was trying to defend herself during a verbal assault that turned physical. Molina’s preliminary hearing on simple assault and related charges is scheduled for January.

In some of the year’s domestic violence cases, the alleged victims and perpetrators claimed to have reconciled by the time the preliminary hearing came around, often forcing prosecutors to either drop or drastically reduce charges. In other cases, however, victims testified against their alleged attackers in open court — nearly all were highly emotional proceedings — to hold their abusers accountable for their purported crimes.

“It’s really difficult to say whether things are getting better or getting worse” when it comes to domestic violence, said Sturman, “but you take comfort in the little victories. And Laurel House is always here to support victims, no matter what.”